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A review by petealis
Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman
2.0
This was one of my favorite books when I was a young teen. These last few weeks I decided to reread the series. The characters were as good as I remembered them, I really related to Blanche and Rose as a kid, and I still think Bear and Fish and their emotional depth is so good, and the fantasy-meets-real-world is incredible. I like the writing, I really do. I think the way the fairy tale plot is incorporated into a real world story is so genius, that the similarities almost feel incidental at times, almost never forced.
BUT
Overall, I am appalled and disappointed. Even though I'm not Catholic, the religion stuff never bothered me. Mostly, it was well incorporated into the story. I guess it could seem preachy to some people but it didn't bother me. Until this book. I thought I was prepared. I knew that the main villain was going to be villainized for her involvement in providing abortions (does she perform them? Does she just allow them? It's never actually said). I knew that Freet would come back up and be villainized for homosexuality. I was prepared to roll my eyes and consider it a misgiving-- to say that someone would traffic organs off of the homeless because they would allow abortions, as one of the characters does, is like saying because someone would steal cookies out of the cookie jar out of their mom's house they'd steal a purse from a department store, one's legal and one isn't, for starters, but I digress. That was what I expected to be the biggest issue reading it myself, but I get the other side of the abortion issue, so I would let it slide.
But Freet. And Fish. I'm still bubbling with fury.
"There his enemy stood, mocking proof that living under a lifetime of this kind of emotional deformation would fatally drive a person to criminal self indulgence and murder."
Look, Freet is bad. But he is not a murderer and rapist and thief and kidnapper because he was gay. I get that some of The Church, I come from the church, thinks that being non-straight is a sin. But this is beyond that. It is not a slippery slope between homosexuality in murder, as Doman OUTRIGHT STATES that it is in this book.
And I'm not even here to defend Freet, but Fish... when I read it as a kid, it flew over my head that he was saying that he struggled with what seems to be actual sexual feelings for men, and that this was his great vice, his great thing in common with Freet. And I'm still stunned. I'm stunned that Doman wrote a narrative in which her character essentially prays the gay away, overcomes his "sin" like one manages to overcome a drinking problem. I'm disgusted that Fish, one of my all time favorite characters, has the arc of managing to finally oppress himself into loving a woman. I'm horrified that one of my favorite books is rendered worse by treatment of a character that in the book, works, because it's fiction, but which would never work in real life.
Love God, and know that he made you as you are. Being LGBTQA is not a sin, and my heart aches for this character repressed by his author. Who knows if I will ever pick up these books again. I mourn how good they would be if the author wasn't driven by arcane belief. I'm sure she cares not what I think, but her loose idea of the slippery-slopes of morality and of the love of God saddens me, because I had once thought it strong.
BUT
Overall, I am appalled and disappointed. Even though I'm not Catholic, the religion stuff never bothered me. Mostly, it was well incorporated into the story. I guess it could seem preachy to some people but it didn't bother me. Until this book. I thought I was prepared. I knew that the main villain was going to be villainized for her involvement in providing abortions (does she perform them? Does she just allow them? It's never actually said). I knew that Freet would come back up and be villainized for homosexuality. I was prepared to roll my eyes and consider it a misgiving-- to say that someone would traffic organs off of the homeless because they would allow abortions, as one of the characters does, is like saying because someone would steal cookies out of the cookie jar out of their mom's house they'd steal a purse from a department store, one's legal and one isn't, for starters, but I digress. That was what I expected to be the biggest issue reading it myself, but I get the other side of the abortion issue, so I would let it slide.
But Freet. And Fish. I'm still bubbling with fury.
"There his enemy stood, mocking proof that living under a lifetime of this kind of emotional deformation would fatally drive a person to criminal self indulgence and murder."
Look, Freet is bad. But he is not a murderer and rapist and thief and kidnapper because he was gay. I get that some of The Church, I come from the church, thinks that being non-straight is a sin. But this is beyond that. It is not a slippery slope between homosexuality in murder, as Doman OUTRIGHT STATES that it is in this book.
And I'm not even here to defend Freet, but Fish... when I read it as a kid, it flew over my head that he was saying that he struggled with what seems to be actual sexual feelings for men, and that this was his great vice, his great thing in common with Freet. And I'm still stunned. I'm stunned that Doman wrote a narrative in which her character essentially prays the gay away, overcomes his "sin" like one manages to overcome a drinking problem. I'm disgusted that Fish, one of my all time favorite characters, has the arc of managing to finally oppress himself into loving a woman. I'm horrified that one of my favorite books is rendered worse by treatment of a character that in the book, works, because it's fiction, but which would never work in real life.
Love God, and know that he made you as you are. Being LGBTQA is not a sin, and my heart aches for this character repressed by his author. Who knows if I will ever pick up these books again. I mourn how good they would be if the author wasn't driven by arcane belief. I'm sure she cares not what I think, but her loose idea of the slippery-slopes of morality and of the love of God saddens me, because I had once thought it strong.